Mark Erelli has released over 16 albums, as well as being an in-demand sideman with the likes of Lori McKenna, Josh Ritter, Paula Cole, Amy Helm and others. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, from how Mark reaffirms his commitment every day, to leaning on the combination of all of your experiences to get through tough situations, to how he learns from everyone he performs with, to the ritual of live music.
Mark Erelli has released over 16 albums, as well as being an in-demand sideman with the likes of Lori McKenna, Josh Ritter, Paula Cole, Amy Helm and others. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, from how Mark reaffirms his commitment every day, to leaning on the combination of all of your experiences to get through tough situations, to how he learns from everyone he performs with, to the ritual of live music.
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:00] Aaron: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Other 22 Hours Podcast. My name is Aaron Shafer-Haiss
[00:00:04] Michaela: and I am Michaela Anne, if you are brand new thank you so much for being here and if you're a returning listener, thank you again for coming back.
[00:00:12] Aaron: For those of you that haven't checked out the show, we like to think of this as the anti album cycle podcast. so it's not gonna be your typical music interview show where somebody shows up with a new record or a tour that they're about to leave on and they're trying to get press about that. We wanted to on the tools and the routines that our guests have found to keep inspiration and creativity and sustainability in their lives and their careers.
[00:00:33] Michaela: Between the two of us, Aaron and I have almost 25 years of experience in the music business.
In an industry where so much is out of our control, up to look up to being in the right place at the right time, who, you know, we wanted to focus on the things that are within
[00:00:48] Aaron: our control. So with that in mind, we decided to invite some of our friends and some of our favorite artists on to ask them the question, what do you do to build sustainability in your life so that you can sustain your creativity?
Today's friend is Mark Erelli. He put his first record out in 1997. He's released, I think he said 16 records, independent labels and also by himself. And he's also been a sideman for other songwriters such as Lori McKenna and Josh Ritter, and Paula Cole and Amy Helm, and he's had a really long, vibrant career.
[00:01:20] Michaela: of our guests so far. Mark has had the longest career, so it was really interesting to talk about how sustaining this career looks over 25 years. We talked about aligning your ambition with your circle of influence and your purity of intention within your music.
We talked about the value in learning from other musicians and friends by supporting as a side musician. One of my favorite things was touching on the ritual of live music performance.
[00:01:56] Aaron: Yeah. How that has. Potentially existed since before spoken language where there is somebody that is producing the music, making the music, singing, playing, all of that.
And then the audience and the ritual of both performing and listening, really opened up both Mikayla and I's Minds. one thing that I think is, a really cool thing that Mark does is every day he wakes up and he reaffirms his commitment to his career and doing what he's doing. And that also involves, checking in with himself and the different metrics that he's set up for himself, both in his business and in his career, but also within himself check in with where he's at and how he's doing.
And then actively choosing this career and this lifestyle. Every day It was really great. we say this is the anti Album cycle podcast, and maybe we annoyed Mark. He does have a new record out and we didn't talk about it at all. But we had a really inspiring, really grounding conversation with somebody that has spent a lot of time doing this successfully.
So without further ado, here's our conversation with Marker Reley.
[00:02:53] Michaela: thank you so much for being here. I was trying to think, you and I have met in person maybe once.
[00:02:58] Mark: Yeah, maybe at like a Rockwood show in New York City. I couldn't remember where, but I
[00:03:03] Michaela: No, it was, it was the Country Music Hall of Fame when you were playing with Lori McKenna.
[00:03:08] Mark: Oh, okay. All right.
[00:03:10] Michaela: It was several years ago, I remember. Very precisely.
[00:03:14] Aaron: Yeah. And, uh, what's the NPR station in Boston? W M H B.
[00:03:19] Mark: Uh, W U M B is the UMass Boston station, the W B U R is the, is
[00:03:26] Aaron: the one that's kind of, oh man, I'm gonna mess this up. I think it's like on the south side, kind of out past Fenway maybe in
that area.
[00:03:33] Mark: yeah. There's, um, W G B H and W B U R are both out there.
[00:03:39] Aaron: cool. I, I think I met you at one of those, I was playing drums with the stray birds
[00:03:42] Mark: Oh,
[00:03:43] Aaron: and,
you know, near the end when they got into like, the tornado of having like a bunch of
[00:03:48] Mark: Fun. Yeah.
[00:03:50] Aaron: I, I was one of those, so,
[00:03:52] Michaela: Where the folkies were, like harassing the drummers, being like, you shouldn't be, you're ruining this
[00:03:57] Aaron: band.
Oh man. We played, uh, lizard Lounge, I think, on that same run. And we were standing, you know, in the parking lot afterwards and there was a, stray Bird super fan sitting there in the circle with us, and he looks across me and asks Maya, he's like, does he ride in the van with you?
And she's like, uh, I mean, he's, he's in the band, you know, he's like, so he plays every show and they're like, he's in the band. And he just like couldn't grasp it. But I will say like two minutes later, as the joint was coming around the circle, he passed it to me and we became friends. So, you know, I, in the end love triumphs, I
[00:04:32] Mark: Uh, yeah, just gotta be persistent.
[00:04:36] Michaela: yeah, yeah. speaking of all that stuff, we're excited to have you today and I think you started putting out records in 97, is that
[00:04:45] Mark: Y yeah. Wow. You really did your homework cuz that's, that's the one before the 99 like debut, so
[00:04:52] Michaela: so you have our, you have the longest career. That we've interviewed yet, we have plans to interview people with much longer careers. but we're excited to hear how you've navigated and,
[00:05:05] Mark: man.
[00:05:05] Michaela: state you're, you're, still in it?
[00:05:10] Mark: Oh, yeah, it's funny, specifically on that point, I remember as a young, artist and as a young man, and as I've become increasingly aware as a young, white man, I remember thinking as I was like getting ready to attack the world that like, I don't wanna survive. Like anyone can survive.
Like, you just breathe and you eat and, and you're surviving. I want to thrive. I want to like, do big things. I want to, like leave something behind and make my mark and all this stuff, and like, now as a professional musician for just about 25 years, survival is, mean, I can't even imagine a higher goal at this point.
You know, what I'm completely focused on at this point of like, how do I keep doing this? And not just keep the hamster wheel going, but like, how do I keep doing this at a level that I feel artistically is getting deeper and deeper and better and better, you know? as a younger person, I, look down my nose pretty strongly at survival and now I'm like, oh my God.
I should be so lucky and I am, perspectives have shifted.
[00:06:19] Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. I've, I guess I could say I'll talk for both of us that we've both are really starting to have that realization, we both went to way too much music school and all of that, so we were very solidly looking down our, our and we're like, no we got this we're gonna do this like, thrive, this achieve, achieve.
And it's like, oh wow. There's so much achievement in just sustaining and keeping on and just being consistent, consistently creating over time and all of that. That's a huge accomplishment all on its own.
[00:06:45] Mark: Yeah. And what that requires is a constant checking in with yourself and with the people that have to live with you and endure you. Every day checking in about like, what do I need to keep doing this? Is that doable? Is that sustainable right now?
Okay. Yes. Great. Let's go do that. If it's not, what is, what can I do now? It's something that I have been wrestling with recently this um, dichotomy of doing versus being, I am great at doing things. I am always doing a lot of things. I'm not so great at just hanging out, Mm-hmm. sitting around, nothing,
[00:07:29] Aaron: Mm-hmm. Yep.
[00:07:30] Mark: you know?
Part of that comes from just doing what you love for a living and, I don't love everything about it, as I'm sure you don't. But parts that you do love, always finding ways, thinking about ways of how can I do more of that? How can I get to that space again?
But the being part of it, I think that's what makes You, a tolerable person to be around. But it also feeds the art too, turn the page amazing. Bob Seger song. I don't want to hear, 50 years of Turn the Page. we've got tonight, we've never get against the wit, it's like you can't just keep writing about playing music,
you know,
[00:08:12] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah.
that evolution of the perspective, I think is something when you're starting out, you're like, okay, what are my needs? My need is to do what I love to do in life. So my main need is to succeed at playing music. And what you, define succeed as, I think is really based around that one.
Need of, I wanna do well so I can keep doing this one thing. And then as you grow, you realize, oh, I have a lot of other needs in life. I need my relationships. Some of us need, I would argue, most of us need love and support, and love and support is an exchange that takes time and presence that is very difficult to have if you're only focused on the doing and the succeeding.
When I was in my early twenties and I saw my life as a musician, I had a very one track mind of like, okay, success is playing, big theaters and having a tour bus and, being really, acclaimed and beloved and I looked my nose down on people who were playing house concerts into their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and now I'm 36 and I'm like, you know what?
If that's what I get to do the rest of my life, that's pretty beautiful
it's changed so much. I, of course, still have ambitions beyond that, but you said, survival and just getting to do what you love in any room is such a privilege, especially in today's world.
[00:09:42] Mark: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Going back to the whole notion of having been doing this for a little bit, there's always these metrics, that you were mentioning, like the things that you measure, how you'll be successful, you know, when you attain this or that. I've now been doing this unfortunately, or fortunately, long enough to have seen entire metrics implode and, and disappear.
They've gone extinct. They're like some species that we screwed over and, and, you know, destroyed the ecosystem and now they're gone. those dreams are completely useless. They have echoes and I still wrestle with them. I still wrestle with the lottery myth that there's gonna be like this one thing that happens that's gonna change everything. And I tell myself that I don't, because I tell myself that I would get up every day and put in the work and I'm not just like buying a ticket and, expecting something amazing to happen. But I still have that expectation because the older music business, that was a dream that they were selling.
But that business does not exist anymore. It is gone. And I would argue that probably one or at least two other versions of the music business where I also readjusted my, and recalibrated my dreams and my metrics, those have also gone too. And three years after the beginning of the pandemic, I'm still trying to figure out like, what are the new metrics, And you know, for me, one of those interesting things was non-musical was, once I was around a lot, Like when the pandemic hit, I had to kind of explain to my, boys like, this is the most I've slept in one bed in my entire adult life. never slept in my bed for this long before.
You know, And it's weird cuz I kind of like it, but as I, I was around so much, people enjoyed having me around, even though I was not in the best frame of mind and heart. it was the pandemic or my eye diagnosis, I was not in a good space and they still enjoyed having me around.
And I was like, oh, okay, this is a new metric. You know, And as a new mom, you know, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm, talking about. And it becomes more so as they get older and they start to get opinions and they start to use words and it's like, oh, okay, this is a new metric. Like, Be around enough so that people in your life that you love feel supported.
if you took the average of a pendulum, at equilibrium, but at any given point in time, it's not looking so great. Sometimes it's way over here, sometimes it's way over here, but on average it's at equilibrium.
And so that's what I try and shoot for. With varying degrees of success, trying to keep those pendulum swings minimal as possible.
[00:12:33] Aaron: I like that analogy of a pendulum. I, think of 'em as different size bubbles that are floating around and there's, you know, there's the life bubble, the family bubble, my career bubble, and if they're out of balance, the whole ship doesn't float correctly
[00:12:46] Mark: totally, there's any number of different analogies, just the people in your life, your partner or whatever. That's a big part of it. None of what I do or what I have done works without my wife. It just doesn't. Now if I didn't have my wife, I probably would've made some different decisions, and who knows what that career would've looked like.
I don't know. And there's no way to know. So it's no way to really, it's useless to contemplate. But, but I do know that the life that I have chosen is only as good and, and as rich as it is because of her. And if I had chosen a different person that wasn't as strong and wasn't as vibrant, as spirit as Polly is it wouldn't have lasted. I had friends that were divorced in my thirties, you know, Mm-hmm. friends. So, Yeah. Anyway, a little bit of a tangent there, but you know, it's the other 22 hours.
Oh,
[00:13:39] Michaela: the important
[00:13:40] Aaron: part of this. It's, it's all of this and especially us. Both being creatives and both trying to build. Congruent, but different careers in this industry. I spent years on the road with other bands as a sideman, and now I produce records and I stay home.
And that's been a, choice and a shift that I've was making even prior to the pandemic. And the pandemic just caught my bluff. It's like, oh, you wanna spend less time on the road? Here, here you go. How's that working out? But there's been a lot of scraping my knees.
I wasn't just like, I'm in the van all the time too. Like, Oh, hey, now I'm making records. I'm saying here, there's been a lot of like, how many bills are due next week? Okay, cool. I can make that happen. Cool. And I wouldn't have been able to do that without McKayla on a very tangible level, you know, monetary level, but also just like the support of making a massive shift in my career and approach to everything and talk about different metrics.
There's an entirely different set of metrics when. You take being a sideman out of the equation and just step into producing and all of that. Just having Mikayla's support and understanding of what this life takes, has been massive.
[00:14:38] Mark: I can imagine. My wife very artistic and is very appreciative of creativity, and she has a lot of creativity that she brings to her work. She's in healthcare, but not a independent artist. And in some ways that works out well for us. In other ways. It's like a lot of communication.
goes towards trying to paint the full picture of what this creative life looks like and why it's good to do this in the greater context of our marriage. said, I was terrified at the prospect of being with another musician, as a younger person actually met my wife pretty young, so there wasn't a ton of this, but there were a couple times where there was like, maybe another spark with another creative person in my life, and I like, ran away as fast as I could. I was like, I just don't see how this is gonna work. But now as I'm at this stage in my life, I know people that are, dual musician couples, people like Jeff Falton, Chris Elmor, who seem to manage it, really well.
And I'm, just in awe of them. I don't want it instead of what I have, but I, I recognize that it's like there's a beauty there in that kind of give and take that is just, required,
[00:15:52] Michaela: What was the fear when you were younger?
[00:15:55] Mark: I think asymmetry. Was a fear. security was a fear. Like, I didn't even think that I was necessarily gonna be able to be a successful artist. I wasn't raised with that, being an archetype. if it's almost an improbability as it's been described to me by, you know, my parents, how is like yaking my, my saddle to another creative, how is that gonna work?
You know, like it's, it just gonna make it harder, even harder for me to succeed as an artist. So I, Just saying it out loud now, it sounds very young and immature. but there's also the, the notion of. Who you are as an artist, like commercially in the image and who you are as a person.
They're not the same. the difference between those two is different for different artists. I think it's probably seems like it's not much of a difference for me. the artist is a better guy, frankly, than I am. And, but I think, I worried about falling for their like artistic persona and then realizing that like, oh, they're not that person.
And also they fell from my artistic persona and I'm not that person. And then what do we do?
[00:17:09] Aaron: Mm-hmm. that's so true. We started dating at 21, and I think I can safely say that neither of us thought that it was gonna be a long-term thing. No. I was like, oh. Like, and it was like, it was like a decade of not thinking it was gonna be a long-term thing.
And I think it's like,
yeah, it's been a long time of, like, only recently I think we've been like, this is a long term thing.
Check this out. Wow. We like, we're married, we own a house, we got a kid. This is a long term thing. We've
[00:17:37] Michaela: been very honest with each other that we spent a long time being like one foot in one foot out of our relationship, living together, even getting married because neither of us thought we would be the type of person that would find your partner young and be like, that's it.
We're in a relationship forever. Family first. We both were like, no, but We found each other, so I guess we're stuck. But it was a lot of push and pull for a long time.
[00:18:03] Aaron: Yeah. I don't think, I'll speak for myself. I can totally relate to your feeling. And I think had I been a little bit older met in college, if I had been more, fully formed as an artist or, even like past the starting line of my career a little bit, I don't know if I would've dated an artist.
You know? I was still, I wasn't, not not you. It's not nothing against you. It's like it's joking. It's exactly what you were saying. Like I would've probably fallen for the outward persona, the artist image. Mm-hmm. And Mikayla and I met at a time where I met Mikayla. That's also who Mikayla is.
You meet Mikayla and you like meet her.
[00:18:41] Michaela: Yeah, my immediately, if you follow me on social media, you know, there's not much, distinction between myself and my, art and what I put out there in the world.
[00:18:51] Mark: Yeah. That's, That's cool. I mean, I, it's similar for me, but, you know, I've come to realize that, the version that that I put out there is the guy that I really want to be, and occasionally I am totally him and I crush it. And then, many times that I fall short of his insight and his compassion and his hope, his optimism.
But he's out there and I have to be him a lot. so I have to practice adopting those mindsets. I kind of just hope that like, you know, smiling makes you happy, Like being that guy. Maybe, Maybe someday I become that guy,
[00:19:27] Aaron: this is a really interesting concept because it's like, you see this very tangibly on social media people just put out the highlight reels, but I've never really thought it, cause I'm not a front person, I'm not an artist. stepping into that character, so to say, is this something that's been like a, very present.
Thought of yours for a while.
[00:19:45] Mark: it's been there. Yeah. Ever since the beginning. and I'll go back to how I met my wife, which you know, playing shows as a young guy, I think there's the stereotype of the musician where like, it's like, oh, you could have a lot of fun, you know, but I never did that because of what I was saying before.
I didn't want someone to fall in love with me, the musician, and then be. Incredibly disappointed by me, the person. When I met my wife I was at a folk festival. I was at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. I was not performing, I was volunteering in the record sales tent. struck up conversations and talked and met each other of my music to the point where like, I started to feel enough for her where it was like, okay, now you really need to hear my music, because now if you don't like the music, that will be a problem. Mm-hmm.
You know? So then, you know, she did.
And, and it seemed like she did like the music. And the rest is history. So they say, but, I knew from the moment I saw her, had literally two days before I met her. Personally to myself, sworn off relationships. I was like, I am trying to be a musician here. I have a lot of work to do.
I can't juggle all this stuff, you know, like, I'm done. I'm just gonna go write songs. I don't know what I thought I was gonna write songs about, like not interacting with other people, but, uh, I think, I thought I was gonna write songs about going on the road and that everyone was gonna find those completely compelling.
and that's kind of what I did at first, but no, when I met Polly, I was telling a friend of mine a story that she happened to, overhear and kind of joined the conversation as I turned and looked at her and I was like, oh my God. This is someone that I need to know, so it took a while for us to kind of. introduced the mark, the artist, into the re into the relationship, you know? and he still creates problems in the relationship every once in a while. But, none of this have been possible without her.
[00:21:45] Aaron: Yeah, I think that fear that you've voiced of stepping back from relationships you're like, no, I want to do the work. you know, I don't have time for this. I have to do this. This is a very common thing. I've felt it, I know Mikayla has felt it. I'm sure a bunch of our listeners have can totally relate to that.
I've heard a lot of friends say it. Yeah. So when you finally were like, oh, there's something cool about this woman. let me introduce Martha Artist. did that change your process, your creative process? Did that change your, viewpoint of your career?
Like obviously it worked out cuz you guys are and have kids and.
[00:22:14] Mark: Yeah, I mean, it's working out is what I, say. Like, I, I never refer to it the past tense. And you know, this is not to emphasize the work that is required, but it is something that I slash we choose every day. And it's the same with the art.
Like it's a way I choose to be every day. And my relationship is something I choose to commit to every day. It's Is it a challenge? Occasionally? I'm sure it's a challenge for the both of us, but I don't mean to overemphasize the work, I'm just highlighting the intentionality of it.
It's actually, I find it a lot easier to, to just commit to. one day or the present moment rather than like, we're gonna be married for 50 years, you know, and you don't actually hear too many stories of, of artists that are married for 50 years, they exist. But, I think it's because there's this kind of quiet, daily rededication, that's the artist that I want to be. I don't want to be broken up. just not an option. It's not what I want and I will do anything to prevent that. But when we have couples that get married, younger couples and, there's like advice that's asked for, or, there's like a guest book or whatever at the wedding.
Like, we always write, like, choose each other every day and the rest will follow. that applies to being an artist too. And it applies to all the other things that you have to do those two hours of fun music every day. You can't just choose those two hours.
You, you really have to choose all the other stuff
[00:23:49] Michaela: Yeah. It's all the unsexy stuff that behind the scenes.
[00:23:54] Mark: Yeah.
[00:23:54] Michaela: Yeah. Which is That's the stuff. That I'm always interested in. And Aaron and I doing this together, we have different things that we like to focus on where I really wanna focus on like all the emotional stuff and like what are the hard things you've gone through and how did you get through it?
And kind of keeps me a little. He's like, okay, we can talk about that forever. But also let's talk about like, how does that translate to like writing a song and recording and the next step. you know, you have your solo career and then you've also been a side musician for people like Lori McKenna and Josh Ritter before the pandemic, how much were you on the road and away from your family, and how much was it divided between side musician work and your artist work?
[00:24:41] Mark: Yeah. I'd say as we approached 2019, it was probably half solo work, half sideman work. The sideman work was so great because I got to play with all these amazing. Artists. Most of them were friends that just hired me to be me on their gig. Occasionally someone like Paula Cole or Mark Cohn I'd get to work with for a while and that didn't know me and they would become friends.
But that sideman work saved my musical career. I flamed out pretty hard around 2004, which would've been my fourth record. And what it took to be on the road and draw audiences. And, I was just,
[00:25:26] Michaela: flamed out?
[00:25:27] Mark: as in just like, I don't know if I can do this. I'm working really hard.
It's not going the way that I thought it was going to go commercially, artistically. I'm loving everything I'm doing. I'm really proud of it. It's not selling like I thought it would, it's not even selling like some of my friends are selling who are on the same record label. So it's not like I can say like, well, it's just this is because I'm on signature and, and I'm not on Sony. that was a really tough moment there. And that was when I started playing with Lori. had done some sideman work before that occasion with Christ El and with Katie Curtis. But that's when I started playing with Lori and it gave me a break from myself, and it gave me a break from whatever I perceived as my.
Stumbling blocks are my, challenges at the time. And then the energy would shift. And the sideman gigs would dry up for a little bit and it'd be like, all right, let's go back and rededicate myself to my own thing. But the main challenges that I had, aside from, it not going the way that I thought or the way that, people around me were like telling me it was going to go when I started out?
there were a couple of 'em.
One was in 2008 when I put out, this record called Delivered, which came out like a year after my first son was born. And that was the last record on signature sounds. It was getting harder for them as a label to work with, solo, singer, songwriters. They'd been licensing my stuff for years, but I just wasn't making their money back.
And so you know, when I made my next record, like I always did, I just made a new record you know, I'd say, Hey, I got a new record. And they'd be like, great, let's find a time to put it out. This time. They were like, Hey, we can't do this anymore. And Signature was my community.
I was one of the guys that the labeled said to new artists like, call this artist and talk to him. He's been on our label for a long time.
And I talked to Josh and I talked to Lori and was like, these guys are amazing and they are amazing, but when I found myself kind of outside that circle, and at that point it was, it was in 2010 when I put out little vigils and I had my second kid where I was like, Oh, now I have to figure out how to do this as an artist without a label.
And I. And a very young child, two very young children at home, and I was really struggling with that. And did for some time. But the side Men work helped you know, I kind of managed to, putting out music. Though there was my longest break between records Right.
after Little Vigils when I didn't have a label and we had this young baby at home and I just didn't know kind of how to juggle everything.
So I just putting records out for four, years, which, you know, four years is not a lot of time between records for a lot of artists, but up until that point, I'd been on DeFranco stuff, you know, I'd been like every year and a half, every two years, every other year.
Like there's something.
[00:28:20] Aaron: four years when you're living, it feels like an eternity. It so long,
[00:28:25] Mark: Yes, it does. Especially with the young kids, where every day feels so long,
[00:28:30] Aaron: Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. I always use Lucinda Williams as an example. Cause I think it's, bet between self-titled and Car Wheels, right? Mm-hmm. Was like a decade in there. And I look back at Lucinda and I think like she has like a massive body of work that she's put out there. But there was a decade in between those two records.
[00:28:47] Michaela: her entire thirties, I think. Yeah.
[00:28:48] Mark: Wait, are you talking, so there was the record in between the self-titled
[00:28:53] Aaron: you're right. A sweet old world came out between her self-titled and Car Wheels. Oh, okay. And it was, eight years between Happy Woman Blues and her self-titled, so basically the entire eighties, she
[00:29:01] Mark: Yeah. Yeah. and that self-titled record.
was, I. Felt very fully formed. You
[00:29:07] Aaron: Yeah, that's, I
think that's
[00:29:08] Mark: time.
[00:29:09] Michaela: I go back to Lucinda too because especially as a woman, I often think it's interesting to hear the differing, relationship to time between different genders. But something I talk about with a lot of women is this feeling of oh my God, we expire when we hit 40, that.
Now we're not interesting. And, Pete, the music industry isn't gonna like us as much. We're not gonna be as appealing if we haven't hit a certain level of success by then. And I just, it's just. I struggle with it, but I'm like, I have to refuse to believe that and go back to all these other people who've proven that wrong.
And Lucinda's one of those. And like, I became a Lucinda fan when I was probably 22 years old, was the first time I heard her. And she was in her fifties or sixties. And did I ever once think, oh, I'm not as into her songs because she's in her fifties. No, I just loved her songs. And since then I've seen her play live and tons of times I've spent my money on tickets and records and that's as a new fan, a young new fan for a woman who is older.
[00:30:12] Mark: I mean, One of the things that I am proudest of and most thankful for is that I don't spend most of my time hanging out playing music with dudes.
I've mostly backed up and accompanied and worked under slash behind, female artists. Whether it was Christ Elm Horse and Katie Curtis and Lori McKenna, whether it was Paula Cole, a little bit with Amy Helm just before the pandemic. I got to see the behind the scenes struggles and some of this stuff is exactly what you were talking about, Mikayla.
I mean, I'm complicit in it to an extent because I'm a, guy and I benefit from the patriarchy in ways that they do not. But, in my mind, I was also like working really hard to support and lift up these people and make them sound as good as I could possibly, you make it. And I felt like I was was slash am part of the solution, a lot of the time, but I got to see the choices that they had to make specifically women.
And, comes to mind. I mean, Lori has turned down more than I will ever be offered as an artist. And I've seen her do it like that. Not even think about it because there was something with one of her, five kids that she needed to be, or she didn't want to be away or whatever it was.
And I've taken a lot of career advice and career direction from watching her do that. And I have turned down things for the same reasons in my own life. And interestingly, it really unsettles people sometimes to see a guy do it. I think people expect the female artists, if they have children to be mothers and to prioritize motherhood.
But when a guy prioritizes fatherhood, there's this like full court press that happens of like, well, you can do, you know, you can figure this out. You can just like, no, I Can't
[00:32:05] Michaela: Can't your wife take care of her?
[00:32:07] Mark: Yeah.
I, I, can't miss his fifth birthday. I have to be there for that,
[00:32:11] Aaron: I see something parallel to that because, Since our daughter was born, we'll tour as a family, but I won't play and I'll go solely to be a dad. I'll bring a little mix rig and I'll work in the hotel room after that. But I'll just be there. Not playing. We're going to Europe, in a.
Couple months, probably right around the time that this episode will air, and I'm not gonna play. I'm gonna go and just be a dad and hang out and be there so Mikayla can do her thing. And it blows my mind how many people are like, wow, that is so amazing. You, I'm like, is it, I'm just doing what needs to happen for my family and when needs to happen for Mikayla.
I'm the expendable one here. You know? She doesn't need drums on stage. Her songs stand up with her voice and her guitar. I'm gonna make it worse, if I was the artist and Mikayla was just traveling, being a mom, people would be like, yeah, that's the family's traveling together.
But because I'm the man that's just there to be a dad, they're like, oh, you're going to be a babysitter. And I'm like, Nope. I'm going to be a dad. This is my kid. I'm choosing to be here. I also have to be here.
This
is my obligation.
[00:33:07] Mark: Yeah. I mean, it's, that's partly the reason that we don't tour a lot as a family because all that parenting falls on my wife and, she's already doing so much of it, even when I'm just doing weekends at home. it's just not fair and it's just not a, role that I want to reinforce if I can.
the general point is that I've just, I haven't learned as much from watching guys as I have from watching female artists.
[00:33:34] Michaela: Going through that really painful time of your solo career didn't feel like it was working. And really, that rejection, that feeling of exclusion is a really painful thing to process and I think we all can process it in different ways and to then go and support another artist or other artists.
In your side musician role, did you find that stuff inspiring and motivating? I know you said you learned a lot, but were there ever times that you also maybe struggled with envy and how did you, you know, work through that if that ever was something that you had to work through?
[00:34:07] Mark: Yeah, I mean, I'm human, the thing that I have been most in awe of or envious of is other artists ambition I've seen just people have ambition and express ambition, and I definitely wanted to do things. But they were never, or very rarely did I express ambition, in terms of like metrics. My ambition was I wanted to be able to sing a certain way night after night without losing my voice. I want to write this kind. I've never written this kind of song. I wanna write that kind of song and I want to write a really good version of it. I never really expressed ambition about I wanna play this room, or I want to gross this much.
And I think there's people in my life that wish I had expressed that kind of ambition, but it just, I was probably too pure. About it and seeing other people being able to express ambition and also work as incredibly meaningful artists. I was like, oh, maybe I could have juggled those two things a little bit better.
So yeah, there's definitely times when I have to take a deep breath and remind myself like why I'm there, and it also helps that a lot of times those, people that I'm working with are good friends. I really want Lori McKenna to get everything that's coming to her. And I am proud of Josh Ritter as a friend, and I want him have everything, and I don't feel like that means that I have to have less so that anyone else can have more vice versa.
and I've just learned a lot from watching people like that. But yeah, there's, there's definitely times where. I am in a room and I'm like, I don't think I can envision myself playing my own music in this room. I mean, I felt that way about the Ryman. I was there twice, once with Lori in like, the first big public performance of humble and kind, playing the Opry as a duo at the Ryman.
And then again, playing the Opry as part of Josh's band and thinking like, I'm never gonna stand here. And when I did inexplicably several years later when my, song by Degrees got nominated for Song of the Year, and I got to play it at the award show, the Americana award show I mean, I almost was like, I still can't really believe that it happened Not only have I never had that ambition, but the times that I've bumped up with, being a part of those experiences, I've thought like, yeah, I can't envision how I do this for myself. maybe I should get myself a vision board or something.
[00:36:41] Michaela: Well, do you, Do you think you can't envision it because you're afraid to let yourself want it or dream it, or because you, don't see the steps from that moment to the next of how it would happen?
[00:36:53] Mark: probably a little of both. If you envision it and it doesn't happen, then you have a reason to feel like you've failed, you're also living yourself completely off the hook, you that's a double-edged sword there, but, you know, just, practically, Like, how do you get from Psim to the Ryman? It seems impossible, and yet I've seen it happen many times over now, you know? maybe there's just a failure of imagination there, or there's just a willful turning away from commercial metrics, maybe as a response to that initial MTV dream that I grew up with dying.
That's we were talking about earlier, like that version of the record business, the music business does not exist anymore.
That was my earliest experience as an artist was seeing like the thing that you thought you were getting into, go away. And then it's like, well, now what?
And it's been many years of asking yourself now what since, I never thought about this before, but maybe that had more of a formative impact on me,
Than I ever wanted to admit.
[00:37:58] Aaron: Yeah, I'm listening to you talk and I'm caught back on when you said that your ambition has been around, your voice or, writing the best version of this song that you wanna write. And that is 100% the soapbox that I will stand on all day in talking to artists that I work with or, friends.
It's like, there is so much in this industry that is outside of our control, no matter how hard you work. And, did you grow up in New England? I'm picking up that maybe you grew up in new Yeah, I did as well. I, I'm picking up on that like, do the work, grit your teeth, bear it, just do the hard work that New
England ethos
[00:38:31] Michaela: also don't dream too big.
[00:38:33] Aaron: It's called being, it's called being a realist.
[00:38:35] Mark: I'm just being a realist. Like,
[00:38:36] Michaela: who do you think you are that
[00:38:38] Aaron: you could, yeah. Um, but you know, When it gets down to it, there's a lot of hard workers that aren't able to bridge the gap between Club Psim and the Ryman. There's a lot of luck that's involved.
You know, there's also like being prepared when that opportunity arises. You know, there's, that whole thing, but in general there's a lot of luck There's a lot of that are outside of your control with how many people listen to your record, the reach of your record, all of that.
So I tried, probably annoyingly to Mikayla, I'm always on the soapbox of like, what is in your control is like what you're creating, getting closer to your pure artistic vision. Like closer to that am I this year than I was last year? And those are things that I think as an artist you can tangibly control and metrics that I think are realistic.
[00:39:23] Mark: I couldn't agree more. I've always thought that like, okay, at some point if you're lucky enough to have people turning towards you and paying attention, you damn well better have something worth saying so that you're not wasting everybody's time. Cuz there's other people out here trying to do the same thing, so I've always conducted myself to the point of if someday something breaks through, I'm gonna have something to say. Now, by degrees wasn't, wasn't like a breakthrough in terms of money. I made no money. I gave all that money however much it was to gun control organization.
But there was no commercial. Or economic breakthrough from that. But there was a point where I got a bunch of people to sing my song. And every, you know, a lot of people heard it probably more than anything else I've ever done. And I had something that I really believe in to say for that.
And all the work that I had done up until that point prepared me for the fact that when it was time to stand on the Ryman stage, flanked by the only two people I'd ever played it before with Josh and Lori were singing my song. It was an incredibly meaningful moment. And my guitar strap broke, my guitar crashed to the stage and broke as they were introducing me. Oh my God. Oh no.
And I had this very specific stereo guitar set up. I couldn't just plug another guitar in. I didn't wanna stop the show and like, hold things up to get a new set. I didn't know what to do. We like plugged it in. It was still passing signal. It was still even in tune somehow having dropped two and a half feet and I just put the guitar back on and I walked out and I sang my song in front of Bonnie Ra and, you know, all my friends and my colleagues and, my heroes and the fans. None of that would've worked had I not done all the preparation, every day up until that point. Prepared me for that. How do you explain that to a young artist that someday you might be lucky enough to be in a situation where, all this work that you put in when it doesn't seem like anyone's paying attention you're going to have to draw on it, and you're gonna have to draw on basically all of it to hold your shit together and do your job. I mean, That's not a sexy thing to say to someone starting out, but it's my soapbox too, man. I, I say to people, on the rare occasion, anyone asks, I say, if you work hard every day for the right reasons, you will be successful. eventually, the only caveat being you don't really get to define what that success looks like. I'm a successful independent artist, does it look like what I thought it would look like? Hell no. Mm-hmm.
You know, And I don't really know too many people where it does look like. I worked with Paula Cole for several years. She had massive hits. her career to her did not look like what she thought it would look like when I was working with her.
We had many conversations about it. So it doesn't really matter what your experience is, it never looks like what you plan it to be
and the best.
[00:42:30] Michaela: level you get to
[00:42:32] Mark: Right. So like the best that you can do is to just control, as you were saying before, Aaron, you control the things that you can control, and that is the intensity and the quality of the work that you put in and whatever comes from that is kind of what's supposed to come from it.
[00:42:48] Michaela: Yeah. And I think, again, to sustain and keep going, it's a lifetime of suffering. If you let. The outside or the result, or the reception or lack of reception, determine how you feel about your work. Which I think is a lifelong journey for a lot of us. no matter how pure my intentions are, if I put out music and I don't get something or it doesn't get recognized in a way I hoped it would.
And even if I like walk it through the logic that I'm like well, it's not my ego. It's that I want that to be able to grow my audience, to be able to keep doing what I'm doing. It's not about just flattery, whatever, know, justification I can do if I'm hurt by it. Aaron always brings me back to, do you like what you made?
Do you like your songs? What else matters? Then.
[00:43:35] Mark: Yeah, that's a really sage kind of reminder. And it's really, easy to lose track of that, you know? I mean, the entire music business is basically designed to distract you from that Is yeah. And it's funny, my career people will frequently say to me like, you've done so many different things.
You've done Western swing, you've done a record of murder ballads, you did a lullaby record, this or that, and I'm like, I understand why it looks different to you, but at any given time I was just doing the thing that I loved doing the most. in my mind 13 times plus however many side projects I've done, the same damn thing. Mm-hmm. I've just done what I love to do and what was interesting me and what was exciting me at the time, Not looking at what was selling and thinking like well, I can do some version of that. Or not looking at any other metric other than what is inspiring me Right?
now? And maybe that's the part of the secret to longevity is just really to the extent that you can.
And I realize that there's a fair amount of privilege in that. kind of mindset, but getting as close to it as you possibly can, for the reasons you were just saying. Do you like it? I love all of it. None of it was as successful as I thought it was going to be or hoped. You know? I mean, Truly none, of it.
But I have since, you know, learned as the longer you stick around you, you hear from people about oh, I listened to this record of yours when I was going through a divorce, and it really helped me. you know, this record did this for me, or this record was my record when I was going through this. You can't predict that. You can't know that, those are beautiful markers of success that, really don't register
[00:45:26] Aaron: Yep.
[00:45:26] Mark: chart or in
review or,
[00:45:28] Aaron: or anything like that,
you know, that's.
[00:45:30] Mark: on a dollar sign.
[00:45:32] Aaron: I mean, a, a way I meant that like in a business metric sense, you know? Yeah. Um,
[00:45:37] Mark: I mean, you gotta keep the lights on,
[00:45:38] Aaron: yeah, to me, those kind of responses that like really deep human connection is priceless. It's worth more than all of that other stuff.
Granted, I would love a platinum record. Great. That'd be cool. But that kind of connection, that kind of community building is what it's all about to me. I had a teacher in college that, asked me the question like, what was the first professional musician, you know, I was thinking back to like, okay, new Orleans, like all that. He's like, no. It was a loop player in a castle. In medieval times, the king and queen would hire a loop player to come and stand in the corner and play. During dinner to like uplift the vibe in the room, you know, and that's your first professional musician.
Before that, you had, you know, music to kind of like keep an oral history and all of that, but like, essentially it's, you got kings and queens hiring, basically like a gesture to come in and play. But like from the beginning people were paying for music to provide connection to uplift emotions or vibe or anything like that.
And so that's like where this all comes from, if you want to chase it back. And that was something that has stuck with me
[00:46:38] Mark: Yeah that's an interesting way of looking at it. I resonate with that. other thing, I guess this is kind of like a side companion to that, the way that I've really been helped in thinking about it recently I got from a friend of mine who's a religion professor, uh, here Boston University.
And he came up to me after coming to see me at a show one night, and he said, he's like, man, you like really held up your side of the ritual tonight. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he said well, what you're doing is a ritual. It's like the modern version of this ritual that's been part of, human, nature since before religion, since before agriculture since before, modern society.
Maybe even since before, you know, modern language like the, like. humans gathered together in a cave around a fire trying to impart information so that they wouldn't feel so stressed out about whatever the unknowns were out in the darkness, and that evolved into storytelling, you were saying, like oral tradition, recording history or imparting information about what was going on around you.
And, that evolved over the years into, among other things, what we do at a gig. And I had always struggled with how monumentally important, what it felt like I was doing, felt, I had always struggled to reconcile that, with the fact that again, who am I like. I don't feel like necessarily I'm so important, but this feels really important.
What is it? And that my buddy gave me the language to think about it, is that we're reenacting this ritual and it's not really about me and it's not really about the audience, but those are the two components that are required in order to enact this ritual. And the ritual is clearly, just basic, primary root function for us as a species.
We did it before. All those things I was talking about before in our revolution. We do it in wartime. We did it in the Great Depression, we did it in the Holocaust. It happens almost in spite of ourselves. And what we're doing now is, the modern version of that. And for me, that kind of helps me take myself out of the equation a little bit. It's like, all right, well I have a job to do tonight. And also the people that come have a job to do, and when I'm browbeating people on social media to come to my shows, it's like, part of it is like, yes, I need to make a certain amount of money here and I want this to be successful.
I want to go back. But the other part is you need to come because that's your job,
And I do your job when I go to see other people. It's, I'm not like saying that, that's your job alone. I'm a fan too. I'm sure we all are. So it's like we all have a role here in, preserving that ritual.
And it's really hard. Sometimes it was really hard during the pandemic but it's necessary.
[00:49:28] Aaron: love that way of looking at it, you know, just, just that simple sentence of like, you did a great job of holding your end of the ritual up. Is just all,
[00:49:35] Mark: that's beautiful. It was such a, transformational way of, thinking about it to me, because before that I would've told you that albums are really where it's at. Like you have control over making an album. You can really craft the statement that you want to craft, and they're around after you're gone.
Gigs are ephemeral. They can be derailed by any number of things, illness, sports, playoffs, other gigs. Yep. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, Like how could this possibly be meaningful on any real lasting level? that's why, because it is the ritual. the last five years or so since he said that to me, I've really fundamentally approached what I do with a very different mindset.
And I found it really helpful, especially on the nights when. If you were to look at it from a metrics, business metrics standpoint, this is a failure. And I still have those nights all the time. I think we all have 'em a lot more than we, than we let on,
[00:50:30] Michaela: Absolutely. I think for sure, and I also think, again, the metrics of what a failure is are all relative because someone who's, aspiring to sell a hundred tickets and they only sell 15, that's an epic failure. But somebody who's used to selling a thousand tickets and they sell 500, that's a failure.
it's hard to remember that these ideas of success and failure are relative. And when you focus on something like the ritual of exchange, That, that's important no matter how many people are in the room with you to feel that. But that's a very pure, soulful approach that I think is necessary to keep going, but also really hard to maintain because at the end of the day, we need the venues to want us to come back.
We need somebody to want to book us. We need, enough money to pay musicians so they'll keep playing with us. So it's, to me, this career is so much of always trying to balance the really deep, spiritual, soulful aspect of sharing music with realities of what building this career is.
[00:51:34] Mark: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I guess, you know, my time being the artist and also my experience being the side person. I feel like that's helped me walk that tightrope, but it is very clearly a tightrope. And I just thought about it this week and I just finished up the bulk of my like initial album, release tour like, got back yesterday and several times during the weekend where I thought if I was a sideman on this gig, on my gig, how would this feel? And I try and make decisions to the extent that I have the resources to make those decisions based on that, and that means sometimes losing money,
in the moment in order to support people in the way that you would want to be supported,
you know?
[00:52:20] Michaela: Yeah. We are past our hour timeframe and we, we didn't even, as it usually goes when these conversations start, it always goes in these really beautiful deep ways. And we didn't even get to some of the important things we wanted to talk to you about, like your, like your eye diagnosis.
And,
[00:52:37] Mark: In some ways it speaks volumes that that stuff didn't come up there's still plenty to talk about
I love these kinds of conversations. I, love the concept behind what you're doing I think it's really important shows like this and basic folk for the newer artists coming up now who have it very hard. need to hear this stuff,
[00:52:59] Aaron: I need to hear this stuff. And I've been at this for a while. yeah.
I was just thinking like, one of those conversations that we have where it becomes hard for me to a host because like, you've said so much that has just completely expanded my mind and my viewpoint of what's going on.
Or put words to things that I've thought that has just been really inspiring to me
[00:53:14] Mark: it's funny, there's so many other things I thought a little bit about what do I do on the other 22 hours? You know, like I'm, I'm, I make, I make my lists, you know, I make all my, you know, I mean I had like all these concrete things that I could have talked about and somehow, like none of them really seem as important as
[00:53:32] Michaela: Well, That's why this we say in our description of this podcast that these are musician led conversations and not just an interview it's really open for where, the conversation leads to.
[00:53:43] Mark: Well, Thank you, for having me and thanks for doing this. And I'm just happy to be a part of it.